By J. Rentilly

THE HAPPIEST PLACE on earth began more than
60 years ago as a park bench reverie, the seemingly
impossible dream of a man who delighted at the
exuberance of his two young daughters on Sunday
sojourns to the elegant, 68-horse merry-go-round
that bejeweled the 4,300 acres of Los Angeles’
Griffith Park. In his mind, Walt Disney saw more
than hand-carved wooden steeds yoked to infinite
circles and an amaranthine waltz: he saw Disneyland.

Next summer, Disneyland—still growing atop

500 acres of land some 40 miles south of
Los Angeles, and host through the
decades to an estimated 700 million
guests—celebrates its 60th anniversary.

The park bench, incidentally, rests
now in the lobby of Disneyland’s Main
Street Opera House, where Disney and
his wife, Lillian, reportedly sat often at
closing time to behold the gleeful faces
of departing guests.

“Smiles. Those were Walt’s priority,”says Chris Strodder, author of The DisneylandEncyclopedia (Santa Monica Press, 2012; not avail-able at Costco), a comprehensive, award-winningexamination of the park’s historyand evolution. “The six-decadetriumph of Disneyland is that ithas stayed true to Walt’s originalmanifesto. When you go to the parktoday, what you still see is what you saw 60 yearsago: happiness incarnate.”Honoring the ingenuity and ardor of WaltDisney remains primary to those holding the keysto the Magic Kingdom today, dubbed Imagineers,even as Disneyland itself has matured from a one-off, $17 million wonderland with but 18 attractionsinto a global juggernaut with parks in 11 localesworldwide. Imagineers are responsible for thedevelopment and construction of Disney themeparks around the world, and include sculptors andwriters, architects and illustrators, aerospace andtechnology visionaries.

“It’s built into the DNA of Imagi-neering, this idea of storytelling and creativity and innovation,” says Marty Sklar,
a 53-year veteran (and former vice chairman) of the organization and a key contributor to the park’s attractions, who
recounted his adventures in his 2013
autobiography, Dream It! Do It!: My Half-Century Creating Disney’s Magic

Kingdoms (Disney Editions, 2013; not
available at Costco). “Walt was a storyteller, to his
soul, and he applied that to an industry that did not
tell stories. Amusement parks [back then] were
really only interested in whipping you from here to
there or trying to scare you, but Walt wanted to
engage you, to move you, to connect you with characters and stories, to put you inside of the stories he
loved himself. That was the real trick, and it’s what
continues to drive the Imagineers today.”

“Walt said, in the very earliest days of Disneyland’s

60 years later, Disneylandcontinues to tell storieswalkpark A in the

Clockwise from above:
Construction and completion
of Sleeping Beauty Castle, the